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Carney: 'Fallacy' to call ACA 'broad-based tax'

By MAGGIE HABERMAN

07/05/2012 12:47 PM EDT

On the other side of difficulties with health care messaging, Jay Carney told reporters in a gaggle en route to Ohio that, despite the taxation clause majority opinion by the Supreme Court, the ACA is a penalty, not a tax. From the transcript:

MR. CARNEY: But if I could just add as a matter of policy, it is simply a fallacy to say that this is a broad-based tax. That's not what the opinion stated that was authored by the Chief Justice. The Affordable Care Act is constitutional under Congress's taxing authority, but this is clearly a penalty that affects less than 1 percent of the American population. And it is a penalty you only pay as a matter of choice, if you're in that 1 percent and you can afford health insurance but choose not to and therefore choose to pass the responsibility for your health care to every other American, which I would note that Governor Romney, when he was governor, thought was unfair and therefore instituted a penalty -- and clear the President does, too, which is why the penalty that's part of the Affordable Care Act was modeled very much on what Governor Romney implemented in Massachusetts.

Q: Does the President believe that the mandate can be a penalty on the state level but a tax on the federal level?

MR. CARNEY: Look, it's a penalty. It affects 1 percent, and perhaps less, of the population. It is a — I don't know about you, but you don't get to choose whether you pay your income taxes — most people don't. I certainly don't. This is not a tax in that sense at all. It is a penalty you pay if you fail to buy health insurance but can afford it. And the reason why the penalty is important is that it's simply not fair to get a free ride and force other — every other American to pay for your health care if you can afford it. So that's why it was the right approach when it was implemented in Massachusetts and it's the right approach as part of the Affordable Care Act.

From Jen Psaki, the newly minted traveling press secretary, the point that Obama was just doing what Romney did:

"Mitt Romney has been defending not only his bill that he pushed forward in Massachusetts but also this as a penalty that was essential."

The argument the White House is making is that it's not an across-the-board levy for everyone, therefore it's not a tax. It is true that the penalty/tax/pick-your-descriptor doesn't apply to everyone, and only to those who don't get health insurance. The lack of clarity over that point is in no small part due to a lack of an effort to sell the plan, given the political realities that engulfed the president's signature policy achievement over the past few years and the congressional midterm results of 2010.

But it underscores that the messaging hurdles don't exist just for Mitt Romney on this front. And each side is still making a case based on the other side's argument.